6 Ways to Set Boundaries Around Email

Executive Summary

Email is no longer just email: messages are sent across dozens of platforms, and people now field text messages, Instagram DM’s, Slack alerts, Voxer messages, Facebook inboxes, and more. The world is full of bids for our attention, and we get stuck in the loop of answering messages, putting in longer hours to “catch up.” In addition to the deluge, email has masqueraded for far too long as both urgent and important. Getting control over your inbox requires two things: focused prioritization and clear boundary setting. The author describes six ways to set email boundaries, and how to clearly convey them.

The internet is full of advice about email. Search for tips, and you could spend a few years of your life triaging, systematizing, and organizing your inbox. Yet despite these systems and tools, email still bests us, taking away precious time from other work we’d like to be doing and the lives we’d like to be living. This is a widespread problem: more and more people feel overwhelmed with work and email, and the pace hasn’t shown any signs of slowing.

Email is no longer just email: messages are sent across dozens of platforms, and people now field text messages, Instagram DM’s, Slack alerts, Voxer messages, Facebook inboxes, and more. The world is full of bids for our attention, and we get stuck in the loop of answering messages, putting in longer hours to “catch up.” But if we shift to answering emails at all times, we shift to receiving emails at all times, a vicious problem.

In addition to the deluge, email has masqueraded for far too long as both urgent and important. Part of the problem is that there isn’t enough friction. We become inconsiderate in requests for time and attention because email is free and fast. Sending messages speedily makes us think we’re important instead of taking time to really chew on ideas, and it punts work onto other people’s agendas rather than asking us to figure things our ourselves. In the end it’s not about replying faster or having a better response system or the right tools. All of this is a signal that there’s something deeper that’s wrong.

The real problem: we don’t know how to spend our attention

The more pressing challenge of today is first deciding what to focus on. Culturally, we are terrible about boundaries and prioritization. This is reflected in part in our consumption habits, and the wide sweeping fame of Marie Kondo’s minimal living: we are drowning in both physical and digital clutter. Email isn’t the problem — boundaries are. Instead of getting “better” at email, we need to get better at prioritization.

Ruthless prioritization is not common enough. In the past, we only had one priority, explains Greg McKeown in his book, Essentialism, because the plural word “priorities” did not exist. At some point mid-century, we shifted to allow for multiple “priorities” and we started to use the word as a verb. Today, we act as though we can have dozens of priorities, instead of choosing one thing to be in focus.

Once we have focus, we also need email to have clearer boundaries

Even if we get on board with focused prioritization — a big ask — we still have a problem: email tools don’t effectively communicate boundaries. Creating context-specific behavioral expectations is difficult in the digital sphere, and something we are all figuring out how to do. Part of this is on us as people to set the limits, part of this is the technology.

Here are six ways to set email boundaries and how to clearly convey them:

Email signature disclaimers. Write an explanation below your email signature that tells people how long it might take to receive a reply and what your office hours are. Increase transparency to how you work.

Use your autoresponder generously. Several writers I know use their auto-responders to carve out chunks of time (weeks!) to focus on bigger projects. This communicates that you are away and when you can expect a reply.

Add instructions on your website or on social media. Tell people your typical response times so that they can plan ahead accordingly. On my website’s contact page, I explain that it often takes two weeks to receive a reply. Whether it takes you two months to get back to people because you’re a brand-new team, or you try to get back to people within 48 hours of a request is up to you. Just tell people what to expect.

Tell people what requests will be ignored. Use your Twitter bio, your contact page, or your employee operations manual to tell people how to use your communication channels. Inform people what will be deleted or ignored. Don’t take unsolicited requests? Delete them if they come in.

Set communications guidelines for your team. When adding new members to your team, taking on new clients, or even starting a new project, specify how and when you like to be communicated with, and ask your colleagues and clients their preferences as well. Get specific about your channels, style, and availability. (For example, when I set up Slack rooms as a teacher, I tell people my office hours are on Fridays and my typical reply times.)

Lead by example. If you’re answering emails late in the evenings and all day on weekends, you’re telling your team that you expect the same from them. Use a service like Boomerang to schedule emails to be sent later or Inbox Pause to control when emails appear in your inbox. Or better yet, step away from your inbox entirely on weekends and uphold your end of the bargain.

Email can be a tool we use to connect, to help other people, to communicate, and even to think. But the deluge of modern email has come at the expense of leisure time and quality time, and too much of it erodes our ability to do high-quality work. Prioritizing ruthlessly can help us reduce the digital clutter. With that, your email inbox might get a bit simpler.

Sarah K. Peck is an author and startup advisor based in New York City. She’s the founder and executive director of Startup Pregnant, a media company documenting the stories of women’s leadership across work and family, and host of the Startup Pregnant Podcast.